Reader's View: Safeguard city's growing recognition

Call it Complete Streets, Smart City Design or principles etched in the New Urbanism. It is time for our city to once again make history and solve the problem related to oversized tractor-trailer trucks rumbling down Broadway and destroying any hope for real future improvement. Addressing the problem associated with the heavy pass-through truck traffic in our city would truly allow downtown to become a first-class place to live, visit and do business.

As a native Saratogian, I've been around long enough to realize just how important the recent recognition by Travel + Leisure Magazine really is. By proclaiming our city as having one of "America's Greatest Main Streets," the magazine places Saratoga Springs in the top 15 of America's small, diverse cities and main streets.

Saratoga Springs is the beneficiary of a rich historic past and a series of deliberate and contributing factors over the past 50 years that has made our downtown worthy of national attention. In 1996, the city won the "Great American Main Street Award" from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1997, Saratoga Springs was recognized by American Heritage Magazine with the "Great American Place Award."

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While this recognition is exciting, I believe we can do even better. By eliminating the 53-foot-long tractor-trailer trucks from Broadway, Van Dam Street, Church Street and Washington Street, the city could move forward with an updated and meaningful "Broadway Master Plan" that would prepare us for the next 50 years.

Simply, the New York State Department of Transportation should assist the city in developing a real solution to the decades-old problem of large trucks destroying our downtown civic environment and with it any hope for real Complete Streets policies that would greatly enhance our downtown business district.

Removing large trucks from our inner-city streets represents our city's version of an "Economic Development Project," the same way new highway construction has accommodated the economic development needs for the town of Malta.

I believe a convincing case could be made to the state of New York that Saratoga Springs deserves the same level of economic opportunity and assistance New York state has provided to our neighbors to the south and GlobalFoundries. Broadway is, after all, adversely impacted by the convergence of five state touring routes that contribute to our dilemma.

If the state's highway infrastructure improvement projects are prioritized as they relate to important potential economic opportunities, Saratoga Springs should top the list. Unfortunately, current conditions along Broadway provide a greater emphasis on accommodating heavy traffic and large trucks than it does on promoting the more desired pedestrian-friendly civic activity of retail commerce.

Solving the truck traffic problem would provide important opportunities for a combination of Broadway street design enhancements that could easily include attractive infrastructure improvements including widened sidewalks, curb bulb-outs, shortened and more pedestrian-friendly crosswalks, possible bike lanes and upgraded decorative street lighting.

Our beloved city deserves nothing less than a new comprehensive strategy designed to make Saratoga Springs and Broadway truly No. 1. Detouring these oversized trucks has to be part of that strategy.

William J. McTygue is a former Saratoga Springs director of Public Works.